The television series The Dukes of Hazzard followed Bo and Luke Duke, two cousins living in a rural part of the fictional Hazzard County, Georgia, racing around in their modified 1969 Dodge Charger R/T, The General Lee, evading corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg and his inept county sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane. Bo and Luke had been sentenced to probation for illegal transportation of moonshine - their uncle Jesse made a plea bargain to stop brewing moonshine in return for the boys to forgo jail time and instead be placed on probation. As a result, Bo and Luke were not allowed to carry firearms (they often used compound bows, sometimes tipped with dynamite) or leave Hazzard County (although the exact details of their probation terms varied from episode to episode; sometimes it was implied that they would be jailed for merely crossing the county line; on other occasions, it was shown that they may leave Hazzard as long as they were back within a certain time limit).

Corrupt politician Boss Hogg, who either ran or had fingers in just about everything in Hazzard County (and whose exact powers, much like the terms of the Duke boys' probation, often varied in different episodes) was forever angry with the Dukes, in particular Bo and Luke, for eternally foiling his crooked scams and was always looking for ways to get them out of the picture so his plots had a chance of succeeding. Many episodes revolved around Boss trying to engage in an illegal scheme with criminal associates. Some of these were get-rich-quick schemes, though many others affected the financial security of the Duke farm, which Boss had long wanted to acquire for nefarious reasons. Other times, Boss hired known criminals from out of town to do his dirty work for him, and often tried to frame Bo and Luke for various crimes such as bank robbery (thus resulting in imprisonment and allowing Boss easily to acquire the Duke farm). Bo and Luke always seemed to stumble over Boss' latest scheme, sometimes by curiosity, and often by sheer luck, and put it out of business.

Due to their fundamentally good natures, the Dukes often wound up helping out Boss Hogg, albeit begrudgingly. More than once Boss was targeted by former associates who were either seeking revenge or had turned against him after a scheme unraveled in any number of ways: Boss' greedy nature, Rosco's bumbling, the criminals simply outsmarting the two or their consciences came to the surface. Sometimes criminals who were even more crooked and ruthless than Boss came to town. Sheriff Rosco also found himself in trouble more than once. On such occasions, Bo and Luke usually had to rescue their adversaries as an inevitable precursor to defeating the bad guys; these instances became more regular as the series went on.